


cutting through the twilight

by snarkingturtle



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 4b finale spoilers, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 06:50:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkingturtle/pseuds/snarkingturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina reads and reads, and rips tears in the walls between dimensions. Not portals, not really—nothing could cross through—but windows, ways for Regina to rifle through worlds looking for any trace of Emma. She always comes up empty, and as she stitches the threads of reality back together, her stomach twists, pain low and dull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cutting through the twilight

**Author's Note:**

> Based on spoilers for the 4b finale. After saving Regina from Rumplestiltskin's dagger, Emma disappears. Regina will bring her back if it's the last thing she does.
> 
> Slightly AU in that there is established Wicked Maiden (Zelena/Marian) & Regina and Emma returned from their roadtrip with Marian and Zelena instead of Robin and Zelena. (There is no Robin.) 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has helped me with this fic, from editing to writing a million iterations of it on twitter.

* * *

 

Regina doesn’t remember much. Remembers pain, insidious and sharp and so cold it burned. Remembers her vision blacking around the edges, ears ringing, remembers the way the dagger narrowed her whole world to hurt and despair, like there was no such thing as good anymore, no such thing as love.

 

She remembers the way her connection with the dagger suddenly _broke_ , remembers gasping on the ground for minutes before she could process anything around her.

 

Remembers Emma, glowing in lightning and determination, remembers trying to struggle forward, Zelena's arms holding her back, red hair falling in her face and her sister's voice in her ear while Regina pulled, pulled.

 

Remembers a loud _crack_.

 

And Emma was gone.

 

 

**12 hours**

There’s no body so Emma isn’t dead. This is Regina’s mantra, anyway, despite any case she has ever seen to the contrary ( _danieldanieldaniel_ , crumbling to dust at her own magic hand).

No body.

Not dead.

Not, not, not.

 

 

**3 days**

Regina feels empty, cavernous and numb, heart beating to the rhythm of _gone_ and _fault_ , and she doesn’t know how much of it is loss, how much is damage from the dagger, carving away love and hope and everything good until Emma—

Until Emma.

She’s down in her vault, has been for the past—day? two days? lack of sleep and daylight blur time into one long stretch—pouring through every book and scroll she has that make even a passing reference to the dagger, anything that can give her some clue as to _where_ Emma _is_ , to how the hell to get her back.  Keeps reading even though her eyes are gritty and the words are blurry, even though she’s losing track of sentences as soon as she finishes them.

Overhead the floor scrapes and footsteps thump on the stairs; Henry’s, she can tell, from the way he takes them two at a time, hits each step hard as he comes down. He slows as he approaches, and she looks up at him, head resting in her hand and smile tired, so tired.

“Mom,” he says. His hair is shaggy, falling into his face, and his eyes are too serious, too worried, as he lays a hand on her shoulder. “Mom, you need to sleep.”

Regina shakes her head, brain full of cobwebs and fog. “I’m fine,” she says, but it’s unconvincing even to her ears, distant and thin like she isn’t all here.

“You’re scaring me,” he admits, and this, finally, is enough to pull Regina into the present, to snap the world back into focus. She stands and opens her arms and Henry folds into them, so big now but still her baby, always her baby.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into his hair, rubbing his back like she used to when he was little and had nightmares. “I’m not doing a very good job of juggling things, am I?”

“I don’t want something to happen to you too.” His words are muffled into her shoulder, and Regina tightens her hug in unspoken apology. Gathers up some of her books and lets him lead her outside, where Snow and David are waiting in their truck, and later, when Regina curls up in bed after a mug of tea to chase away the lingering chill of stone walls, Henry stretches out next to her.

“I believe in you,” he says. “And I believe in Ma. You’ll find her. I know it.”

Regina holds his hand, and hopes she doesn’t dream.

 

 

**7 days**

Regina takes Emma’s red leather jacket from Snow’s apartment, brings it home and hangs it on the back of her closet door. She tells Snow and David it’s because she needs something strongly _Emma_ to serve as a link and ground her scrying, and this is true, it is, but it’s also true that the jacket smells like Emma and that there are two nights where Regina crawls into bed with it, breathing it in and then turning her face away so she doesn’t get it wet with her tears.

She stops at two because any more and she risks replacing Emma’s scent with her own. She tells herself this is only concerning because it might weaken the jacket as a magical link.

She is lying.

 

 

**12 Days**

Regina reads and reads, and rips tears in the walls between dimensions. Not portals, not really—nothing could cross through—but windows, ways for Regina to rifle through worlds looking for any trace of Emma. She always comes up empty, and as she stitches the threads of reality back together, her stomach twists, pain low and dull.

With this kind of work comes magical blowback; Regina spends the days after them bedridden and out of it, head aching too much to even read. When Henry gets home from school he brings in his laptop and they watch movies together: _Sound of Music_ and _Harry Potter_ and _Lilo & Stitch_. Things from his childhood they have seen so many times they don’t have to pay full attention. Henry rests his head on Regina’s shoulder while Regina focuses on keeping her eyes open, on not dozing off in front of Harry and dragons.

Henry’s computer beeps its low battery, and he sighs. “You seriously need a tv in here, Mom. This set-up is dumb.”

Regina laughs for the first time in almost two weeks.

 

 

**21 days**

Sometimes Regina leaves messages on Emma’s voicemail. Excuses, mostly, to hear Emma’s voice on the recorded greeting ( _you’ve reached Emma Swan. leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can_ ), but also excuses to pretend, for those 30 seconds (or one minute, or two, or three), that Emma is not _missing_ , that she is only briefly unavailable, that any moment Emma might call Regina back,  _hey, what’s up_.

Mostly Regina’s messages are about nothing. They’re about how Henry is outgrowing his shoes, _again_ , or how Neal spit up all over Blue in Granny’s yesterday, and Snow was mortified but Henry hid laughter behind a milkshake. They’re about David chasing Pongo and getting cats out of trees, about the weather, about the dinners Regina cooks (but not about how she doesn’t eat them).

At three in the morning, when Regina can’t sleep and everything aches, the messages are a little different. They’re _come back_ and _I miss you_ and _this is too hard_. They’re _I’m sorry_ and _I’m trying_ and _what if I’m not good enough_.

Once, after too much whiskey and not enough food, it’s _why did you do it? just tell me **why** , damn it, please tell me why_. It’s hanging up and calling back two more times, leaving messages that are nothing but wheezing and choked breathing.

Regina doesn’t call again after that.

 

 

**32 days**

Most afternoons Zelena brings her lunch. An arrangement Henry made, Regina suspects, and learns not to protest when Zelena tugs her away from the mess of books and papers in her study, or on the dining room table, settles Regina on the couch under a blanket like some kind of invalid, bag of take-out on her lap.

“Eat it all or I’m telling on you,” Zelena says, and Regina will not give Henry more to worry about—not when he comes to her room crying after nightmares about Emma—so she tries.

Sometimes Zelena comes with Marian, their fingers tangled together as they let themselves into Regina’s house, each laden with bags of groceries. Marian unloads hers onto the kitchen island, kisses Zelena on the cheek and rests a quick hand on Regina’s shoulder before leaving again, and Regina’s never sure if Marian’s hasty departures are about their history, or Zelena treating her too carefully.

“Tell me about her,” Regina orders, when she gets tired of the way Zelena dances around her clear happiness, hiding smiles and blushes behind her hand anytime Marian texts. “How did you meet?”

Zelena eyes her. “Enchanted Forest,” she finally says, voice wary at first but warming the longer she talks. “Years and years ago. I bumped into her—literally—after my first lesson with Rumplestiltskin. Somehow we kept seeing each other. Soon there were feelings, but things…” Zelena shakes her head, red hair going everywhere. “Things got complicated. She chose Robin, and I chose…”

“Destroying me?” Regina offers, one eyebrow quirked.

Zelena smiles. “We all make mistakes, sis. Luckily I died and got a second chance. Hitched a ride back to the present with her and followed her to New York. And here we are.”

“Romantic,” Regina says, and her tone is sarcastic, but deep down she has to admit it really is.

“We’ll all go out sometime,” Zelena says. “Once yours is back. It’ll be fun.”

_Once yours is back_. Regina can feel her smile slip from her face, pushes away her food and returns to her books.

 

 

**37 days**

She’s been translating wrong. She thinks, anyway, based on a new scroll Belle brings from Rumple’s shop. She thinks she’s been translating wrong. The dagger didn’t stab a hole between worlds and send Emma to another realm, it sucked her into _itself_ , which sounds ridiculous, except it’s only been a few weeks since Regina released an entire convent of fairies and a giant demon beast from a hat, not even two years since her own son got trapped in a magic box.

Hell, Sidney lived in mirrors for years.

People can get trapped in strange places.

Regina throws away all the work she’s done so far and starts over.

 

 

**39 days**

Regina brings the dagger, several scrolls, and a potion she was up all night brewing to the spot where Emma disappeared. It’s some of the most difficult magic she’s ever done, delicate and finicky and it feels like it’s sucking her dry, black spots dancing in front of her eyes well before she’s finished the spell.

When her vision finally clears—when she’s muttered the last words of the incantation and drizzled the potion over the dagger, when the air fills with smoke that makes her eyes burn and throat sting—there is a figure crouched on the ground in front of her.

“Emma?” Regina croaks. Emma turns, pushes herself to her feet and stares at Regina, grey-green eyes wide with surprise.

“Regina?”

Regina takes one step closer, two, three, then actually _flings_ herself at Emma. Throws both arms around Emma’s neck and buries her face in Emma’s shoulder, while Emma lets out a slight _oof_ and stumbles backward before steadying both of them, belatedly bringing her own arms up to encircle Regina.

“Hey,” Emma says, awkwardly patting Regina’s back. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“I hate you,” Regina whispers. She’s crying now, one arm still looped around Emma’s neck, other hand fisted in Emma’s tank top. “I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you.”

Emma laughs, wavering, watery, Regina thinks maybe she is crying too. “I know.” She rubs her hand between Regina’s shoulder blades. “I’m sorry. I know.”

When Regina’s eyes are finally less blurred with tears she lifts her head and holds Emma by the shoulders. Gives Emma a full body scan and runs her hands up and down Emma’s arms, trying to see where she might be hurt.

Emma looks all right. A little paler, maybe, than before she disappeared, but otherwise no worse for wear, no visible wounds that Regina can see.

(Regina knows all too well that not all magical damage is external.)

Regina rests her head back on Emma’s shoulder, feels Emma’s fingers come up to tangle in her hair.

“I’m sorry it took me so long. To get you out. I’m so—I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’re a real slowpoke,” Emma says, and Regina flinches.

“Hey.” Emma pulls back a little, resting three fingers on Regina’s cheek. “I was kidding.”

Emma’s fingers are warmer than Regina would expect, touch almost more gentle than she can handle, and Regina closes her eyes and tilts her head down. “I wasn’t.”

She flicks her eyes back up to Emma, who licks her lips, raises one hand to brush blonde tangles off her face. “How long?” Emma asks, voice hesitant. “How long was I…in there?”

Emma’s thumb traces slow circles on Regina’s wrist, and Regina lets out a low sigh. “Thirty-nine days. Here. Here it was thirty-nine days.” She swallows. “For you…?”

Wind is picking up around them, and Emma wraps an arm around Regina’s shoulders. “Not that long,” Emma says. “I mean, there wasn’t exactly a way to mark time, so things got a little fuzzy, but…definitely not that long.”

Regina nods, resting her head on Emma’s chest over her heart, and listening to its steady beat. “Good,” she says. “That’s good.”

 

 

**30 minutes**

They go to Snow and Charming’s, because that’s where Henry is. There’s crying, from everyone, and after a three-way hug with Emma and Henry (more of a tackle on Henry’s part), Regina retreats to the kitchen, busying herself making tea and cocoa and trying to ignore the way her knees have started to tremble.

Henry joins her as she’s sprinkling cinnamon on the cocoa, wrapping both arms around her waist and resting his chin on her shoulder, and god, she thinks, he’s as tall as she is now, when did this happen, when did her baby get so grown up.

“I knew you could do it,” he says, and Regina has to swallow past the lump growing in her throat. “I knew you’d get her back.”

 

 

**6 hours**

Emma comes home with Regina and Henry, and there’s a moment where Emma hesitates in front of the guest room before Regina takes her by the hand and tugs her down the hall to her own bedroom.

“Just to sleep,” Regina says, when Emma looks at her with wide wide eyes. “I need to know you’re not going to disappear.”

They crawl into bed and turn out the lights, and Emma is tense next to her, body stiff and clearly nowhere near sleep, as Regina rests one hand on Emma’s bicep.

“Emma,” she murmurs. “Emma, what is it?”

Emma shifts a little, turns her head so she is facing Regina. Moonlight trickling in through a crack in Regina’s curtains turns the hair splayed out over Emma’s pillow silver.

“It was dark,” Emma says, voice low and hesitant. She licks her lips. “Where I was. I don’t remember much. But it was dark.”

Regina nods, once. Waves her hand and sends four balls of light floating to the ceiling, each settling in a different corner and casting a dim gold glow over the room. Emma sighs, quiet and relieved, and Regina curls her body around Emma’s, head resting on Emma’s shoulder and arm slung low after Emma’s hip.

They sleep.

 

 

**1 day**

The morning after Regina brings Emma back, the magical backlash is the worst it’s ever been, bad enough that Regina can’t even lift her head from her pillow. Emma looks down at her, brow creased and eyes tight with worry, hands fluttering at her sides.

“What can I do?”

“Stay,” Regina says. “Please.” It’s not a fair thing to ask—not when Regina’s barely conscious and Emma has parents a five minute drive away who spent the past month missing their daughter—but Regina asks it anyway. And Emma doesn’t object.

Regina slips in and out of sleep, Emma and Henry’s voices a hazy hum in the background, and she thinks she maybe has a fever—must have a fever—but she also doesn’t care because Emma’s _here_ , ruffling Henry’s hair and calling him kid, laying a cool hand on Regina’s forehead while she and Henry start a movie on Regina’s bed, and she did this, Regina thinks, she really did this.

 

 

**7 days**

Steam curls around Regina after her shower, and when she comes out of the bathroom she’s still tying the sash of her robe. Emma’s standing at the opposite end of the bedroom, facing Regina’s balcony window; she’s got her phone held to her ear, and if Regina listens carefully she can just make out the tinny sound of her own recorded voice through the speaker.

Her messages.

Fantastic.

She waits until Emma lowers the phone before clearing her throat, and Emma spins around to face her, eyes wet and full. Emma reaches for her, but Regina flinches away.

 

“Regina…”

Regina folds an arm over her stomach and straightens her spine and her shoulders, looking anywhere but at Emma. At her curtains fluttering in a breeze, at her own hesitant reflection in her vanity mirror. At Emma’s jacket, still hanging on the back of her closet.

“ _Regina_ ,” Emma says again, and this time Regina lets Emma catch her by the wrist, fingers in a loose grip. Emma gently tugs her a few steps closer, waiting for Regina to meet her eyes before speaking again. “Regina, you know why.”  

“Don’t—” Regina starts, turning to pull away, and Emma tightens her hold on Regina’s wrist.

“You know why.”

Regina shakes her head. Shoves Emma’s shoulder with her free hand while her face crumples, but Emma still doesn’t let go.

“Regina.”

“Stop,” Regina growls. “Stop saying my name like it’s okay, like you didn’t—you _left_ , Emma. You could have _died_ , you could have—you could have been dead, and I would have never known, and you—you—”

Emma wraps both arms around Regina’s shoulders and Regina trembles, trembles.

“You can’t make me love you and then die,” Regina whispers. “You can’t.”

“Yeah.” Emma kisses Regina at her hairline, bringing one hand up to cup the back of her head. “Back at you.”

Regina snorts. Emma’s playing with her hair now, and it’s easy, almost frighteningly easy, for Regina to lean into her warmth and touch, to slip an arm around Emma’s waist and let out a long slow breath. “No more almost dying.”

“No more almost dying,” Emma agrees. “I figure if we get that down, we can figure out the rest.”

Regina hums, tilting her head so she’s looking up into Emma’s face. Down the hall she can hear the sounds of Henry starting to get up, and Emma leans in and kisses her, slow and deep and like a promise, and Regina doesn’t know what happens next, but here, in this moment, she thinks that everything might be okay.

 


End file.
